Zambia’s government wants to extend its International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme another 12 months beyond its current expiry at the end of October, a cabinet statement said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The copper-rich Southern African nation has been trying to get its public finances back on track with IMF support after running up a huge debt pile.<\/p>\n
Its 38-month Extended Credit Facility was approved in August 2022 for an initial $1.3 billion but was later increased to $1.7 billion. So far about $1.55 billion has been disbursed.<\/p>\n
The cabinet statement said Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane had been authorised to ask the IMF for the 12-month extension.<\/p>\n
“The objective is to consolidate the gains achieved during the programme period into 2026” and help support economic reforms, the statement said.<\/p>\n
A finance ministry spokesperson declined to elaborate when contacted by Reuters.<\/p>\n
Zambia defaulted on its external debt in 2020 after years of unsustainable borrowing but battled its way to a restructuring deal with its primary creditors last year. It is still seeking to agree restructuring terms with smaller creditors\u00a0including Afreximbank.<\/p>\n
The IMF’s board last week\u00a0approved\u00a0a $184 million disbursement to Zambia after completing the fifth programme review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zambia’s government wants to extend its International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme another 12 months beyond its current expiry at the end of October, a cabinet statement said on Wednesday. The copper-rich Southern African nation has been trying to get its public finances back on track with IMF support after running up a huge debt pile. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,30],"tags":[1163,394],"class_list":["post-17138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-southern-africa","tag-international-monetary-fund-imf","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}